The Lava Lamps That Help Keep The Internet Secure
Tom Scott1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2017–2024
explainer · general · evergreen · 2017–2024 on HN
Tom Scott visits Cloudflare's San Francisco office to show the wall of lava lamps whose camera feed is used as a source of entropy for random number generation. It is a short explainer on how this helps secure internet encryption.
The go-to short explanation whenever lava lamps, entropy sources, or Cloudflare randomness come up.
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3 comments from Hacker News
There's a good Tom Scott video on this too. Like most of his stuff, it's well worth the watch. ▶ this video
ObTomScott: The Lava Lamps That Help Keep The Internet Secure ▶ this video (Mention of the London pendulums at 2:39)
Alternatively, just do what Cloudflare does (did?), and have some cameras pointed at lava lamps[0]. [0]: ▶ this video